Your Takealot Marketplace account is a business account which operates with a net balance (“Current Balance”). This includes transactions between you and our customers (orders and returns) and you and Takealot (charges, fees etc.). These distinctions bring about certain accounting practices that will be new to you. Please keep reading to understand what you can expect.

Where can I track the transactions on my account?

All transactions can be viewed on the Transactions page of the Accounting section of your Seller Portal. The page also allows you to filter through your transaction history by date, transaction description, transaction type and amount. For easier assessment, you can download an Accounting Line Item Report on the Reports tab (see “How to reconcile my balance” further in this document).

When does a “Customer Order” become a “Sale” and appear on your Transaction page?

Customer orders are only considered to be a successful sale once the unit has been dispatched from our Distribution Centre to the customer. In the View Sales page, this is where the Sale Status is “Shipped to Customer”.

At this point, the transaction will appear on your Transactions page along with the Success and Fulfilment Fee.

When and how will I get paid for my sales?

There are various rules in place to prevent fraudulent activity and hedge against customer returns. Please take note of the following.

The clock starts with your first sale

You will only be eligible to receive payment for your sales, two weeks after the first sales transaction appears on your Transaction page. This is a safety measure to ensure we do not allow fraudulent sales without recovery of funds to our customers. Once you have passed this period, your account joins the disbursement cycle.

4 payments a month - the disbursement cycle

The standard disbursement cycle refers to the 4 dates within each month that your funds are released (disbursed) to your bank account. These dates are always the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th and depends on whether or not you have a positive Available Balance (See “What balance will I be paid”). Should any of these dates fall on a public holiday or weekend, we will release your funds on the next business day. Please note that disbursements may take 3 business days to reflect, depending on your bank.

What balance will I be paid/How will you pay me for the sales?

You will be paid the “Available Balance” as found on your Transactions page if this is positive. This means that:

You will not receive a disbursement if you are still within the first 2 weeks of your first sale
You will not receive a disbursement if your Available Balance is negative (See “Understanding your Available Balance” below)

Understanding the “Current Balance”, “Pending” and “Available Balance”

Current balance

The total net balance of your account including all historic transactions (income and expenses). This is not your disbursement amount.

Pending

Customer Order Payments (sales income) transactions only, processed within the past 72 hours and withheld from your Available Balance. Each payment transaction will move from “Pending” to “Available Balance”, exactly 72 hours after appearing on the Transactions page.

Available balance

The difference between the Current Balance and Pending transactions. If positive, this will be paid out within the next disbursement cycle, if you are eligible. If this is negative, you will not receive a disbursement. Debit orders will run against your account for negative Available Balances on the 28th of each month only. See here for more information.

Please see the example below of what the above 3 balances:

Invoicing

Who should I invoice for my goods?

You will not be able to invoice Takealot for all goods shipped. Your stock remains your property throughout the use of the platform and you will only invoice Takealot where we have lost or damaged your stock during our care of your goods (fulfilment or storage).

All invoices with regards to sales should be made out to the customer who purchased the item. The information required to process each invoice will be available within the Export of your View Sales page. It may be that customers, from time to time, will request an invoice from you. Please refer to the Manage Customer Messages section for more information: https://sellerportal.takealot.com/customer_requests

What invoice will I receive?

You will receive an account invoice from Takealot each month for transactions concluded between you and Takealot for services rendered as well as ad hoc transactions i.e. fulfilment fees, success fees, penalties, shrinkage etc. These transactions include VAT.

Invoices are uploaded to your account on the first day of each month and will include all transactions processed in the month prior. Our system will also automatically send out an email notification as soon as the invoice is uploaded. You can view your invoices on your Accounting page by selecting the Invoices).

Fees, charges and reversals

Fees

All fees and charges are available on the Pricing tab of https://www.takealot.com/sell The following fees and charges apply to your Takealot Marketplace account:

Subscription Fees

A Subscription Fee will be charged in advance, on the first day of each month. The Subscription is non-refundable and entitles you to the services required to operate your digital storefront. This includes catalogue creation, Seller Support services and all other ancillary services. Subscription fees are charged on a month-to-month basis and can be suspended according to your business needs by clicking on the “Stop Selling on Takealot” button on the Account Settings page of your Seller Portal.

Success Fees

These are Takealot’s referral fees and cover transactional costs, customer support and all-round platform support. They are calculated as a % of the VAT inclusive selling price per item sold. This fee will be credited for returned items.

Fulfilment Fees

Fulfilment fees cover receiving into a Takealot distribution centre, putting away, picking, packing and delivery of your sold items to the customer. Fulfilment fees are charged per item when shipped from a Takealot distribution centre; based on the combination of its weight (kg) and volumetric size (length x width x height in cm³).

Storage Fees

Storage fees are only applicable if you choose to store your items in one of our fulfilment centres; and are based on the age, stock cover and size of your items held in storage at any of our fulfilment centres.

Items with a Stock Cover of 35 days or more Formula: Stock on Hand / (Total Sales in last 30 days / 30)

Please note: You do not necessarily need to stock your items in a Takealot Distribution Centre. You can choose to sell on Leadtime.

You can avoid storage fees by creating a Removal Order on slow-moving items or running promotions on your items. Please note, you must have a positive account balance to remove stock. To view items eligible for end-of-the-month storage fees, go to your Manage Inventory page and set the “Show All Items” to “Eligible for Storage Fees”. All eligible items will have an exclamation mark next to their quantity. Hover over the quantity number, in the Quantity Available column, to view the available quantity of items in each distribution warehouse.

Charges

Penalties

Charges may be added to your account in the event that you fail to respond to communications or take action as required. Such charges include, but are not limited to:

· Failure to respond/take action with regards to distribution centre collection notices.

· Ad hoc customer compensation or discount in the event of order issues or complications.

Reversals

Returns

In the event that a customer order is returned and accepted, the sales transaction will be reversed on your Accounting page. This includes the Customer Order (at sales price) as well as the Success Fee. The Handling Fee will not be reversed as the expense was incurred regardless of the success of the sale. When a return is processed, the following line transaction will appear on your Accounting page:

Customer Order Reversal
Success Fee Reversal

More transactions

Other Payments

There may be times when payment is due to you that do not arise from sales. In such instances, an invoice will be requested from you to be settled by us. Such invoices will not be paid to your bank account but rather transferred to your Takealot Marketplace account to ensure it is recorded on your transaction history.

Failed Disbursements

The disbursement of funds to your account will fail in the event that your bank account details are incorrect. Should this happen, you will be notified and the funds placed back into your Takealot Marketplace account. Your banking details can be updated on the Account Settings page of your Seller Portal and should not include any spaces between the digits of your account or branch number.

Electronic Payments Made To Takealot

Any payments (EFT) made to Takealot will not reflect immediately on your Takealot Marketplace account. Funds may take 2 to 3 business days to confirm. Only after the funds have been confirmed, will it be displayed on your account. Please use your Seller ID as reference when making a payment. Once paid, send through your proof of payment to Seller Support so that they may fast-track the confirmation with our Finance Department.

Debit Orders

Why Direct Debit Orders?

By setting up a Direct Debit Order, any negative balance accrued while using the Marketplace platform will be settled automatically in an easy, convenient way - supporting the health of all our Seller accounts in the following ways:

A secure industry-standard process in e-commerce
Avoid negative account balances that may lead to account suspensions
Helps to build trusted Seller status and reduces dispute

A debit order is a strict Seller requirement to sell on the Takealot Marketplace platform. Any non-compliant accounts will be suspended and may lead to account termination.

What can cause my account to be negative (in arrears)?

Your Current Balance shows the financial health of your Seller Account at any given point in time. Your account will go into arrears if your sales have not been sufficient to cover Takealot charges and fees. Below are a few examples of what can drive your account into arrears and how these can be addressed:

Returns: Product returns may contribute to a negative account balance. Look at factors that could be driving a high return rate such as the quality of the product or your catalogue information
Storage Fees: Items without sales or with a stock-cover of more than 35 days will be charged storage fees. Consider selling your slow-moving items on a leadtime basis or manage your in-stock item levels according to your predicted sales
Subscription Fees: Should you decide to no longer sell, make sure you cancel your subscription by clicking the ‘stop selling’ button. You can re-subscribe at any time.

When will a debit order run against my account?

Takealot will only charge your nominated bank account if your current balance is negative on the 28th of each month. This transaction will reflect on your accounting page in the Seller Portal.

Statements

Statements will be generated and available with each disbursement cycle. Statements include a summary of the transactions applicable to the relevant disbursement cycle, in order to understand your closing balance at the end of a disbursement cycle.

To view the individual transactions reflected in the statement, generate an Accounting Line Items Report for the relevant disbursement period. You can use the disbursement date information in this report to reconcile with your statement.

How to reconcile your account balance

A quick reconciliation

Download your Accounting Line Items Report

Navigate to the Reports page and follow these directions:

Select “Accounting Line Items” from the Report type
Select a wide date range i.e. if you want to reconcile a disbursement for the 28th, ensure your date range goes back at least 2 disbursements (14th) or 4 weeks if you have not yet had a disbursement prior to this date.
Select your Delimiter (select comma if you are unsure) - this will help you to convert your data to columns once downloaded - for help with converting your CSV to a readable columns - see the quick steps we found online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8hH-PSRDOw

The Accounting Line Items Report contains all your account transactions including the following additional columns (where these apply):

SKU - if relevant to the transaction type
Product Title - if relevant to the transaction type
Disbursement Cycle - a date that refers to the disbursement period the transaction was applicable to

Follow the steps outlined below:

Click on the data Tab
Click on Filter to add filters to the columns of your report
Click on the filter on column N to bring up the filter options
Select the disbursement cycle you wish to reconcile by selecting the date only and de-selecting the “Not Yet Disbursed” filter
Column J will now show all transactions that make up your disbursement amount (at the bottom of the column)

A detailed reconciliation

Step 1 - Download your Accounting Line Items Report

Follow the same steps as above.

Step 2 - Download your Account Statement

You can access your Statements from the “Statements” tab in the Accounting section of your Seller Portal. These are generated automatically with each disbursement and cannot be requested/generated. You will notice the “Statement File Name” refers to the disbursement period for which the Statement was generated. Inside the file you will see the following information:

Step 3: Match the the report to the information to the Statement:

Identify the Disbursement transaction for the previous disbursement period and the Disbursement transaction for the Statement period you are reconciling
All the transactions listed in the relevant Statement will appear between these two Disbursement transactions
The Disbursement Cycle column includes the end date of the disbursement period the relevant transaction is applicable to
The “Revenue for last 3 days held back” can be identified as either:

The Customer Order transactions marked as “Not Yet Disbursed”, if you are reconciling for the most recently completed disbursement period
The Customer Order Transactions that have the next “Disbursement Period” date compared to the disbursement period you are reconciling for(as these were carried over to the next disbursement period and paid out then)